


Better With You Near

by Eienvine



Category: The Good Cop (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s01e08 Will Cora Get Married?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 05:44:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16278854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eienvine/pseuds/Eienvine
Summary: TJ never says the right thing. Cora doesn’t mind that as much as she used to. Episode 8 tag.





	Better With You Near

**Author's Note:**

> Cora seems to have recovered quite quickly from episode 8, but I imagine there'd have been more fallout from it than the show decided to show us. So here's Cora struggling to deal, and TJ . . . being TJ. :)

. . . . . .

The first time Cora goes to Farrell’s, after . . . everything, her hands shake as she takes a seat at the bar. The last time she was here, in this very seat, a handsome man burst through the door to apologize for having hit her car, and her life changed forever. And not for the better.

She’s only been sitting for a moment when, as though prompted by that memory, a different man comes through the door: handsome in his own way, she supposes, but without the confidence and charm of her now–ex-husband. And Cora tenses as TJ’s gaze finds hers—not out of fear, as has been happening lately nearly every time she’s alone with a man who’s larger than her, but out of discomfort.

Things have been different with TJ—kind of weird, really—since he made the phone call that saved her from being murdered by her husband. It’s nothing TJ’s doing, though; he has been nothing but kindness and solicitude since it all went down, never once gloating at having been right, or trying to make her feel bad about those awful things she said.

But that’s almost part of the problem: part of why things have been awkward and uncomfortable and tense between them. They haven’t talked much about that terrible fight—and actually they haven’t talked about the whole messy case since that night she ate scrambled eggs in his kitchen—but it’s in the back of her mind every time she sees him, and sometimes she wants to shake him and demand to know how he isn’t furious with her. But she says nothing, and he says nothing, and they carry on with their working relationship and pretend that everything is fine; they pretend it so hard that things are now almost _aggressively_ normal between them. But that tension is always in the background.

And TJ feels it too, she can tell by the way his step falters when he sees her. Before Warren, he wouldn’t have hesitated before claiming the seat next to her. She hadn’t realized until this moment what a great comfort that is, to know there’s at least one person in the world who always wants to sit by her, and she adds “ruining drinks with TJ” to the list of crimes Warren committed.

But when she smiles at TJ—small, slightly strained, but real—his expression lightens and he comes over to sit beside her, and a weight lifts from her shoulders.

“Hey,” he says carefully, and she understands his hesitation; they may be aggressively normal around each other on the job, but this is the first time they’ve seen each other outside work since the scrambled eggs. She apologized that night for what she said, and he said he forgave her, but every time she remembers the shocked hurt on his face when she said “Maybe it’s in your blood” . . . well, that doesn’t feel like the sort of thing a simple apology can fix.

“Hey,” she responds quietly, and turns to the bartender. “Ginger ale, with a straw,” she orders, as though the bartender doesn’t already know, and next to her TJ ducks his head and smiles—a real smile—and for a moment it feels like maybe things are going to be okay.

But then silence falls—well, relative silence, considering where they are, but it is an unusually slow night at the bar—and Cora’s shoulders grow tense again. She’s come to hate the silence, because it gives her too much time to wallow in her thoughts, but she hates noise too, because it’ll mask the sound of anyone coming up behind her, about to hook his arm around her throat and drag her to the window—

She’ll get past this, she knows she will. She’s tough, and anyway this is not the first time she’s been the recipient of violence. But it’s only been a week and a half, so while she hates how jumpy she still is, she’s not going to chastise herself for not being over it yet. Still, understanding why she feels this way doesn’t change the fact that she hates this silence, hates being alone in her own head—

“Talk,” she says abruptly, turning to TJ.

He blinks in surprise as the bartender serves him his drink. “Talk?”

“Yeah. Just . . . talk.”

He understands, she can see from the softening of his eyes. “About what?”

She shrugs, looking around, and her gaze falls on his drink. “About . . . straws.”

That prompts a genuine laugh from TJ, and it warms Cora’s heart to know she can still get that reaction from him (he has not laughed in her presence in a long time; things might be aggressively normal between them these days, but that doesn’t mean they’re back to normal). “I believe the last time I talked about straws, you had a few things to say about how bored you were.”

That prompts a tiny laugh from her; already his presence is doing her good. “Fine, not straws, then. How about . . . why ginger ale?” He looks confused and she explains, “I get that you don’t drink. But the only soft drink I’ve ever seen you with is ginger ale. Why?”

His brow furrows. “You really want to hear that?”

She really does. And she doesn’t mind if it’s boring. Because here’s the thing: Warren always said the right thing, and look how that turned out. TJ never says the right thing, but she also knows that he’d die before he’d harm a hair on her head. He makes her feel safe—he’s always made her feel safe—and she could really use that right now.

“Yeah, tell me about ginger ale.”

So he does.

Her hands stop shaking.

. . . . . .

fin


End file.
